


A Season For

by calerine



Category: Arashi (Band)
Genre: Budding Love, Gen, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-02-03
Updated: 2017-02-03
Packaged: 2018-09-21 18:01:00
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,734
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9560543
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/calerine/pseuds/calerine
Summary: Farmer AU. Ohno moves in next door to Aiba's farm from the city, and Aiba falls a little in love.





	

**Author's Note:**

  * For [taykash](https://archiveofourown.org/users/taykash/gifts).



Ohno moves in next to Aiba in October, when he is about to start wearing a heavier coat for early mornings on the farm.

The trucks arrive just after Aiba's done feeding the cows and cleaning out their living space, a long line of them that doesn't stop for ages so Aiba makes himself tea and cleans out yesterday's dishes with a dry cloth.

It's just starting to drizzle miserably. From his kitchen window, he watches while his new neighbour, a small man with a round face that reminds Aiba of full moons, dashes from his car into his front porch, hand held over his head. For the rest of the day, Aiba looks up intermittently from his tasks - picking out eggs from the hens' nests, chopping firewood for when it gets even colder - eyes searching out the man again, a certain familiarity niggling at the back of his mind, waiting to be considered.

The trucks don't leave until the sun is about to set. The ground is wet from the whole day of rain, and Aiba traces his eyes across the beams that have found the cracks between clouds, how they shine off the puddles on the ground and bounce into his home. The old wood floor turns fiery orange in the glow.

That night, Aiba makes dinner while listening to Nino complain endlessly about the new company executive in charge of him, phone clasped precariously between shoulder and tilted head. A slip and it's going to be mirin-flavoured, Aiba knows; he's done it before. His mother had been left gurgling in the beginnings of nikujaga until Aiba fished her out again and his phone promptly fuzzed out. On retrospect, it had been hilarious and horrible because she had been waiting for Aiba to stop cackling before his phone died.

Suddenly the light in his new neighbour's house comes on, and the man from before shuffles into his bare kitchen, a packet in hand. When he turns around from his microwave and they make eye contact, Aiba waves, the both of them in their respective kitchens, two points of light across a dark stretch of land. The man tilts his head curiously and raises his hand in reply. It feels like comradeship somehow.

So he lets Nino keep going, standing at his kitchen counter even though he's just waiting for the sweet potatoes to finish steaming. In his head, he imagines his best friend in a Tokyo rush hour, the crowd jostling him on all sides, his guitar case pressing into his back as he heads to the station.

But as his kitchen fills with the sweet earthy scent of sweet potatoes and his neighbour fishes his dinner out from a plastic bag, Aiba wishes Nino was here instead.

*  
The next day, Aiba cracks open his oldest bottle of umeboshi, picked and pickled seven years ago, from the compartment in his laundry room floor.

He brings it over to his new neighbour's house in the early afternoon, after all the chores are done and Aiba's aching for a nap. It takes a while for him to come to the door, but when he does, he's still half-asleep with pillow marks streaking across his jawline and down his neck.

It takes Aiba a moment to gather himself. It's been a while since he's had to make conversation with a stranger. "Hi, I'm Aiba Masaki, I live next door? Uhm, I saw you move in yesterday and came around to say hi. So, uhm. Hi! I made umeboshi, and brought you some."

"Oh!" is all the man says in reply to Aiba's brief ramble.

"Oh?" Aiba ventures, the glass bottle of pink plum left outstretched between them, its juice sloshing still.

"Oh, I'm Ohno Satoshi." The man replies, scratching at his ribs through his jumper. It's 17 degrees and he's only in a threadbare shirt and sweatpants. Aiba resists the urge to look down at himself, his boots caked in mud and his nylon jacket that smells like cows.

"It was nice - " _to meet you_ , Aiba starts to say, about to leave. But then Ohno straightens from his slouch, and takes the bottle from him, their fingers brushing briefly, Ohno's bed-warmed ones against Aiba's that have turned to ice. The glass slips from his grip.

"Do you want to come in for tea?" Ohno says, looking behind him into his bare home. He seems to come to himself a little, then "I haven't unpacked yet but I'm sure I can find... uh - something?"

Perhaps it's the moment of contact after months of only talking to the elderly people around town, perhaps it's the manners that Aiba's mother beat into him as a child finally coming back to him. But suddenly, he understands that this is not about him or his loneliness or his uncertainties; it's about this man who's moved into a new place with only his belongings as company.

Aiba knows how that feels.

"Why don't you come over to mine instead?" The man brightens, and it's like sunlight on Aiba's floor yesterday, the brightness cutting through all this grey. "It'll give me a chance to change out of these clothes, and if you are hungry, I can make us lunch."

"Really?" Ohno says, even though he's stepping out through his door already, still in his indoor slippers.

Aiba finds a giggle in his throat, and he doesn't resist when it floats right out of his mouth and in between them. "I have house slippers at mine too actually, so you don't have to bring yours."

Ohno looks down at his feet. "Oops," he says a little belatedly but no less sheepish. Then he ducks back into his door and emerges in some leather shoes.

"I haven't unpacked anything else," Ohno admits, the bottle of umeboshi still in his hand. His eyes crinkle when he smiles, and Aiba finds himself wanting to trace the curve of them, the gentle slope of his joy.

Nino's never going to let him live this down.  
*

Ohno is such a city man that sometimes conversations with him uncover memories that Aiba hasn't seen in forever, like old friends who have found new lives but remain precious still. One lunch turns into two, then suddenly Ohno's knocking on Aiba's door to have dinner together, bearing gifts of expensive alcohol and stories that Aiba hadn't realised he'd been aching for.

Some nights Ohno ends up sleeping on the extra futon on Aiba's living room, after drinking too much and then dreading the walk back to his own empty house in the cold. Others, they talk so much and so long that Aiba falls asleep where he sits too, and wakes up in the middle of the night with his throat parched, and his hand still clutched around an empty sake glass.

Nino tells him it's something else.

And Aiba's inclined to believe him too, but sometimes it feels like Ohno is just filling a gap in his life that the city used to, the part of him that yearns for company and conversations in all forms. It's the part of him that told him not to leave Tokyo, that made him cry after he talked to Nino and Sho over the phone for months afterwards, listened to their lives and wondered if he'd made the correct decision after all.

Some days, he loves his life here, the old people who make him pickles and teach him how to sew, the land that gives him the food he cooks with, this endless sprawling space. But other days, he misses the kitchens of the city, the crazy bustle of dinner service, the cramped spaces and the heat of open fires on his fire, then his friends piled in a packed izakaya down the street.

*

“Has no one told you?” Aiba blurts out when Ohno shows him his vegetable patch, dwarfed in size by the sheer size of Ohno's property. The rest of the land is still untilled even though it's so late in the season that Taka-san down the roads has already been talking about harvesting his turnips and radishes.

When Ohno looks down puzzledly, Aiba's still gaping. "Told me what?"

"That you can't plant wasabi just anywhere you want," he digs his fingers into the soil around the plant, prising open the loose dirt. "Look," he says. "The roots are not doing well, they need flowing water and very particular conditions, Ohno-kun."

Aiba watches as Ohno deflates visibly. He wants to pat his back in sympathy because they've all been there, especially for people like Aiba and Ohno who didn't grow up in the countryside and had to learn from scratch how and when to plant what.

"Maybe I should stick to fishing," Ohno says, sitting back on his haunches too, and surveying the rest of his land. Aiba can already imagine him by the nearby lake, clad in boots and weighed down by fishing gear. His heart does a little somersault.

"Maybe," Aiba starts and Ohno turns to him hopefully. "Maybe you could try root vegetables first, those are hardier. Not as fancy as wasabi, for sure, but just as tasty."

"I should have googled that before I tried planting them." Ohno's morose expression makes Aiba laugh.

"Next time just come over and ask me, I can be your Google!" He puffs out his chest, and thumps it with his fist. But that only overbalances him and sends him landing heavily on his butt and Ohno in his haste to grab onto Aiba only manages to sprawl into him instead, his face smooshing into Aiba's belly, cutting off a loud oops before its prime.

The ground is still damp from yesterday's rain and Ohno's so warm Aiba wants to curl into the heat of his giggles, wants to press his cold hands under Ohno's shirt to warm them up. Ohno tries to get up, but then he's laughing so hard he keeps falling over again. After a while Aiba tugs Ohno down instead so they up lying side by side in the dirt, staring up at the overcast sky.

The birds chirp quietly in the distance and down the road, someone is using their tractor, its engine stuttering into life.

"I'm going to have to do laundry today after all, Aiba-chan." Ohno complains after a while, and Aiba finds himself instinctively listening for the undercurrent of mirth in his voice.

**Author's Note:**

> I wanted to write more but I ran out of steam.


End file.
